Obama announces $600M for job grants

Obama announces $600M for job grants

Associated Press

OAKDALE, Pa.

Emphasizing skills training as key to a growing middle class, President Barack Obama on Wednesday announced $600 million in competitive grants to spur creation of targeted training and apprenticeship programs to help people land good-paying jobs.

“When it comes to training our workers, not all of today’s good jobs require a four-year college degree,” Obama said. “But I promise you, there’s not a job out there that’s going to pay a lot if you don’t have some specialized training.”

With the economy recovering and unemployment still stubbornly high at 6.7 percent, Obama portrayed skills training as critical to maintaining the U.S. competitive edge in a global economy that has rapidly changing technology and competition from countries such as China.

Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, who traveled aboard Air Force One with Obama, said businesses spend $400 billion a year to train their workers. She said a goal of the new programs is to encourage employers to make that training available to others.

Obama announced two programs, the larger of which will put nearly $500 million toward a job-training competition run by the Labor Department and designed to encourage community colleges, employers and industry to work together to create training programs for the jobs employers need to fill. Applications were to be available starting Wednesday and due by July 7.

The program is part of an existing competitive-grant program for community colleges that train dislocated workers for jobs.

A priority will be placed on partnerships that include national entities, such as industry associations, that pledge to help design and institute programs that give job seekers a credential that will be accepted by employers across a particular industry.

Under the second program, scheduled to begin in the fall, the Labor Department will put an additional $100 million in grants toward rewarding partnerships that expand apprenticeship programs.

This competition will focus, in part, on partnerships that create programs in high-growth fields, such as information technology, health care and advanced manufacturing, as well as programs that provide college credit or industrywide skills certification.

Obama was joined for the announcement by Vice President Joe Biden, a Pennsylvania native who was born in Scranton.